HOA problems in GA...

[Chotii]

I can't help with this, I just wanted to toss out an anecdote:

When we bought our house 12 years ago, the covenants said 'no poultry, rabbits, or farm animals'. However, the people who live on either side of me, who bought their houses within the last 5 years, never saw any covenants at all.

I went and asked all the neighbors who might be affected, and they said they didn't mind at all if I got chickens. My 3 are certainly quieter than the dog who lives in the yard behind mine, who is often left out to bark and yelp, even after midnight.

We have no HOA to enforce anything, although there must have been when the development was built in 1973. So I have chickens, and except for the day one got out and spent the night on the lam, prompting a phone call from a neighbor at 8am the next morning, "Hello, would you please come get your chicken off my porch?", there's been no trouble.

I have never heard anything good come out of HOAs, because it seems like the nitpicking rules lawyers always rise to the top and take control, micromanaging everybody else's lives to no benefit.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
There are certainly many HOAs like that--but you don't hear about the many others that don't micromanage people's lives and property.

I live in an HOA, and have for the last 10 years. Our rules predominantely relate to the common areas. We don't tell people what colours they can paint their houses or what kind of plants they must (or cannot) have. We do tell them that (non-ornamental) fences must be able to contain their animals. We are an agricultural neigborhood and host small horse shows on a regular basis. Earlier this year and again in the fall we will host a small poultry show.

 

[KJzCola]

Well, met w/ the HOA president - he gave us two "verbal" options...

1. get rid of chickens within 7 days

2. go to court


We said, we'll see you in court!!  When I asked what was our violation, he did not state the chickens, but instead he said we misrepresented the purpose of our structure.  The covenant does not state we must provide a 'purpose' for any structure -just the dimensions, material, drawings & where we place it on our lot.  Our structure was already approved by our ACC and they did not ask what the purpose was for anyway.  I think they may be a bit confused how the law reads!  LOL!  What do you think???


Many other subdivision covenants specifically state, no poultry, no livestock....ours does not!!!

Id like to know how things turned out for you because i am currently dealing with almost the EXACT same thing! My husband and I searched for a home for 4.5 YEARS and every other HOA we looked at had statements specifically against poultry. This one said NOTHING other than pets may not be noisy or smelly "noxious or obnoxious" to be exact.
I moved in with my chickens, ajd apparentpy exploded someones brain, i think the nosy witch diagonally from me. We have 2 acres the shed that hoyses the chickens was approved by default bc we got no response and most of my neighbors have 0 probpem with them and find it quite amusing that I have chickens.
We have received 2 citations about the chickens even though theyre not against covenants, and one of the citations MISQUOTED the covenants!!! We sent a well structured reply including the actual covenants as well as county laws governing the topic showing that we are well within right. No response to that.

All of a sudden after our letter. The managment company got fired, the HOA (Of which we still dont know WHO the president is bc no one we asked can tell us) hired a new managment company AND CHANGED THE RULES without a meeting or a vote! GA (where i live) legally requires HOAs to notify each household by post of large or important meetings so they already broke the laws there.
The new rules are ver-batem what you listed in your first post. So they have now included "birds". However we had to sign the covenants when we bought the house. We were not made away of the intended change, allowed to vote on it, or sign the new rules, so idk what they think they have on us but im scared and stressed out about it.